When one thinks of the future of architecture and design, one is inclined to think about environmentally sustainable woods such as bamboo or recycled building materials. Concrete—a substance as old as the Roman Empire—is hardly the first thing that comes to mind in envisioning the future of the developed world. And yet it is concrete, that ancient, lowly material, that is in fact making waves in future-forward circles.

Why concrete? The answer is nothing short of astounding: multiple firms, including an Italian venture called Italcementi, the US firm, Field Office and another American consortium known as the Virginia Regional Environmental Management System (V-REMS), have created a concrete which utilizes ultraviolet light and a chemical compound called titanium dioxide to essentially devour pollution. Tests conducted in Milan, where Italcementi’s TX Active nanoconcrete has been installed throughout the city, have shown that coating fifteen percent of a city’s visible surfaces would result in around a fifty percent reduction in NO2 pollution.

The concrete revolution on the horizon is merely the first wave of a transformative new vista in architecture and design: nanotechnology. While still a nascent science, nanotechnology holds the potential to reshape nearly every aspect of modern society. In short, it is a form of engineering at the molecular level—designing a product from the very elements that constitute matter itself. While it may sound like a farfetched Star Trek plotline, the reality is that many nanotechnologically engineered substances are already available.

Noted inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil writes in his recent work, The Singularity is Near, that “Emerging nanotechnology capabilities promise a profound impact on the environment. This includes the creation of new manufacturing and processing technologies that will dramatically reduce undesirable emissions, as well as remediating the prior impact of industrial-age pollution.” Indeed, the same technology that anchors TX Active and other nanoconcrete composites is already in use—self-cleaning tiles, which also utilize titanium dioxide to keep their surfaces clean, have been employed by architects for a number of years. It is in extending those same self-cleaning properties to concrete, deployed widely in urban cores, that Kurzweil’s vision of pollution remediation becomes reality. Kurzweil predicts with startling accuracy the exact technologies necessary to create nanoconcrete, writing: “The nanoparticle forms of oxidants, reductants, and other active materials have shown the ability to transform a wide range of undesirable substances. Nanoparticles activated by light . . . are able to bind and remove organic toxins and have low toxicity themselves.” It is this principle which is utilized by pollution-eating concrete, which transforms pollutants into inert salts. As an added bonus, the concrete retains the self-cleaning properties of its forerunner. In other words, buildings covered in a coating of the titanium dioxide-treated concrete will remain far more true to their original colors than their non-environmentally-friendly counterparts.

TX Active has already seen extensive use in Europe, where it was recently featured in the Venice Bienniale and has been used in Italy, France and Belgium. TX Active was used to pave a section of a town in Italy called Segrate, which then measured a 60% reduction in NO2 pollution. Air France employed TX Active in building a new headquarters at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, and architect Richard Meier employed it as part of his design for the Dives in Misericordia Church in Rome; a major aesthetic draw for both was the aforementioned self-cleaning property of the concrete. For Meier, it was critical: the church façade features white “sails” some sixty feet tall, and Meier insisted the sails retain their original white hue over time. Only nanoconcrete fit the bill.

While the cost of production is still roughly thirty percent higher than regular old-fashioned concrete, nanoconcrete clearly has sparked a great deal of interest among architects and environmentalists, and for good reason: aside from aesthetics, the potential environmental and public health dividends are invaluable. Given its higher price, however, it is most likely that large-scale early adopters of the technology will be forward-thinking, socially conscious companies and governmental agencies. Plans have emerged to implement it here in the United States, and specifically Los Angeles. Field Office, based in South Carolina, is experimenting with a nano-concrete virtually identical to Italcementi’s, with the addition of a porous surface so as to increase the overall surface area of the concrete, thereby maximizing its pollution-eating potential. The superABSORBER, as Field Office calls it, has attracted the interest of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which wants to deploy superABSORBER concrete along sections of Interstate 10 in an effort to reduce pollution in school zones. It is a trial run, but if successful, it may lead to more widespread use both in Southern California and elsewhere. Half a world away, Chinese officials are installing a similar nanoconcrete in Olympic Village parking lots in an effort to curb pollution during the 2008 Olympics—a major concern in Beijing, one of the world’s most polluted cities and site of recent, dramatic spikes in the incidence of lung ailments among its populace. With initial investment in the technology by governmental entities, economies of scale will bring the price of the superABSORBER and similar products down; combined with competition from other firms (such as Italcementi and V-REMS), it is not overly optimistic to hope that by the next decade, pollution-eating nanoconcrete will be equally affordable as its older brethren.

While nanoparticles capable of cleaning the environment are by far the most exciting emergent technology in concrete, there are other advances in the making of this ancient material that make it attractive to builders and architects. The addition of thin fiberoptic filaments to concrete mixtures allows it to be translucent; light and silhouettes become visible through its surface. Such concrete, dubbed LiTraCon by its creator, Áron Losoncz, is being considered for use as sheathing for New York’s Freedom Tower, the replacement for the World Trade Center towers lost in 9/11. Another technology, called Engineered Cement Composites, allows concrete to become bendable under pressure, thereby minimizing its tendency to crack and buckle under heavy loads. This new, flexible concrete has already been used in projects in Asia and Australia, and its use in the United States is slowly growing as well. In 2006, the National Building Museum in Washington, DC held an exhibition called Liquid Stone: New Architecture in Concrete, which featured both products. Meanwhile, in Pasadena, California, the first LEED-certified Platinum home built primarily of concrete is the subject of its own reality show; its composite recycled concrete features better insulation than wood structures, keeping heating and cooling costs lower than its more common counterparts.

Clearly, there are few more exciting building materials being engineered than modern concrete. The Romans, some of the first concrete architects, first noted that adding substances to a concrete mixture would alter its physical properties; blood, for instance, was well-known in Roman times to prevent concrete from freezing in cold climates. Our far more sophisticated forebears further refined concrete in the 19th century, and now, at the beginning of a new era, scientists and engineers are pushing the boundaries of concrete’s capabilities even further, harnessing the very elements that comprise our world in order to create from one of the oldest known construction materials a more durable, beautiful and sustainable building medium for the 21st century.

>Written by d/visible contributor Nickolas Sifuentes .

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 11:03 am and is filed under Technology, Industrial, Architecture, Art & Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.